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The Shallow Roots of the Human Family Tree
An anonymous reader writes to mention an AP story about research discussing the relatively recent origins of every human on earth. Despite the age of our species, every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC). From the article: "It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors -- who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence. But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived."
You might be able to trace your geneology, but the process assumes that all your ancestors were entirely forthcoming when it came to their nuptial reltaions. Makes you wonder why children take the male's family name?
May the Maths Be with you!
Other than that, the artocle does make sense.
Relatively recent origins? You mean, like, everyone on Earth today was born within the last 125 years? Duh!
Oh, you mean ancestry... Yeah, every dates back to the monkey-that-wasn't-a-monkey having babies. Duh.
More recent than that?
OH! Maybe you mean: Everyone is connected by a common ancestor a LOT more recently than people think is possible!
Maybe you just should have said that.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Or am I related to Kevin Bacon? I do find this a very interesting topic. Now it is even possible to have your DNA tested to find what your ethnic ancestory background is. This area of research can go along way into removing a lot of racial prejudice in our society.
"Anything tastes good if you deep fry it."
I've never been able to trace back any further than 1650 or so. Not that I've tried all that hard - it's at that point where I have to leave the US and travel to England to find more, and that's way beyond my budget. My ancestor arrived in the US not only broke, but in debt - he had to pay for his passage with several years of indentured servitude. Not much has changed...
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
I'm my own grandfather...
Donald Ray Moore Jr. (mindrape)
Suspected Terrorist
no, it's our weakness.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!
g reat-great-grandmother' ?
So, this could be true if we changed mother to 'great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
What population? The were white settlers hunted the Tasmanians down like animals, then herded the last few survivors to a Christian-themed labor camp on a desert island where they succumbed to starvation and disease. The last pure-blooded Tasmanian died in 1876. Her skeleton was put on display in the Tasmanian Museum (as an example of "primitive human") and was finally cremated, over the museum's vehement objections, in 1976.
The fact is, we live in the present, and that's what is important. I couldn't care less if your great-great-grandmother was the queen of spain, or if your grandfather's second cousin's dad was a slave. That needn't have any effect on how I interact with you.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
here's the beginning, taken from:
... as if her regal bearing and fierce eyes somehow "ennobled" me and all her descendants ... as if the "character" of the entire species, our potential for virtue, somehow depended on having at least one ancestor who could have starred in a Leni Riefenstahl documentary.
g an.htm
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook918.htm
With hindsight, I can date the beginning of my involvement in the Ancestor Wars precisely: Saturday, June 2, 2007. That was the night Lena dragged me along to the Children of Eve to be mitotyped. We'd been out to dinner, it was almost midnight, but the sequencing bureau was open 24 hours.
"Don't you want to discover your place in the human family?" she asked, fixing her green eyes on me, smiling but earnest. "Don't you want to find out exactly where you belong on the Great Tree?"
The honest answer would have been: What sane person could possibly care? We'd only known each other for five or six weeks, though; I wasn't yet comfortable enough with our relationship to be so blunt.
"It's very late," I said cautiously. "And you know I have to work tomorrow." I was still fighting my way up through post-doctoral qualifications in physics, supporting myself by tutoring undergraduates and doing all the tedious menial tasks which tenured academics demanded of their slaves. Lena was a communications engineer--and at 25, the same age as I was, she'd had real paid jobs for almost four years.
"You always have to work. Come on, Paul! It'll take fifteen minutes."
Arguing the point would have taken twice as long. So I told myself that it could do no harm, and I followed her north through the gleaming city streets.
It was a mild winter night; the rain had stopped, the air was still. The Children owned a sleek, imposing building in the heart of Sydney, prime real estate, an ostentatious display of the movement's wealth. ONE WORLD, ONE FAMILY proclaimed the luminous sign above the entrance. There were bureaus in over a hundred cities (although Eve took on various "culturally appropriate" names in different places, from Sakti in parts of India, to Ele'ele in Samoa) and I'd heard that the Children were working on street-corner vending-machine sequencers, to recruit members even more widely.
In the foyer, a holographic bust of Mitochondrial Eve herself, mounted on a marble pedestal, gazed proudly over our heads. The artist had rendered our hypothetical ten-thousand-times-great grandmother as a strikingly beautiful woman. A subjective judgment, certainly--but her lean, symmetrical features, her radiant health, her purposeful stare, didn't really strike me as amenable to subtleties of interpretation. The esthetic buttons being pushed were labeled, unmistakably: warrior, queen, goddess. And I had to admit that I felt a certain bizarre, involuntary swelling of pride at the sight of her
Well worth reading, along with the rest of the stories in the collection "Luminous" by Greg Egan. here's another link to some favourable reviews of his stuff: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/e/e
Plan 9 from Bell Labs.
Given the worldwide geographical spread of Homo sapiens it's a believable number. As recently as 75,000 years ago we lost around two thirds of the population in the Lake Toba eruption and there have been a fair few fluctuations since then.
The stuff later in the article is interesting. One question it raises is the effect of the increases in travel will have on the genetic mix. Traditionally the vast majority of the population married someone within a small radius of their initial home. As larger numbers of people move further away there could be some interesting effects.
Despite the age of our species, every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC)
Well damn, I can trace my ancestry to someone much more recent than that. To boot, I'm pretty sure we all have ancestors that lived during 500 BC... I dare you to find me someone who lacks a living ancestor during anytime past the origin of life on earth and before their own time. I frickin' dare you.
Ohhhhhh... They mean to say that everyone can trace their ancestry back to a single person who lived during the Golden Age of Greece. That guy must've been a stud.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Can someone tie this in with the ultimate ancestors: Adam and Eve? Using the chronology in the Torah, they lived roughly 5 to 6000 years ago.
Fata viam invenient.
This fellow must have been quite busy with the ladies.
No it wouldn't. Despite the wealth of information available today, racists will consider people with different color skin or slightly differently shaped eyes to be less than human. There is no rationale behind it whatsoever and having a pedigree to show that say, (for the most common example) a white supremacist and Martin Luther King Jr. share common ancestors 60 or so generations back would not change their attitudes.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
"That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece"
I guess that this proves that no aliens have visited Earth in the last 2000 years? Or is it that no type of evolution has taken place in that time period that changed some non-homo sapiens to homo sapiens?
Well duh!
Think about it... Am I missing something, or is this statement COMPLETELY BRAINLESS?
The "New York Times" gives a detailed analysis of genetic disease in Saudia Arabia, where more than 50% of marriages are ones between blood relatives.
Curiously, the nature of genetic disease suggests that if you want to ensure the survival of your descendants into the eons upon eons, you should marry outside of your ethnic group. The offspring of an Eskimo-African couple will typically have a stronger set of genes than the offspring of an Eskimo-Eskimo couple, a German-German couple, or a Vietnamese-Vietnamese couple.
Wow, we can really do some neato stuff in 2007! I wonder if they'll have flying cars by then too?!
Whaddya'all think 'bout that? Jeez louis, 2007 is so durn far away!
no, it's our weakness.
Hey! Hear the good news? Now you can bang anybody since we're all cousins!
Their 2004 Nature paper. (May require a subscription to view the full text, I'm not sure. I might have institutional access.)
There is also a relevant Wikipedia entry on the most recent common ancestor.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
then he couldn't possibly have been a geek.
Curiously, the nature of genetic disease suggests that if you want to ensure the survival of your descendants into the eons upon eons, you should marry outside of your ethnic group. The offspring of an Eskimo-African couple will typically have a stronger set of genes than the offspring of an Eskimo-Eskimo couple, a German-German couple, or a Vietnamese-Vietnamese couple.
That is patently false. Humans, before we had modern technology that allowed us to travel great distances in short periods of time, had very little contact outside of our own tribes. To put, humans lived within their own tribes for hundreds of thousands of years.
Mixing does not create a "stronger" result. If anything, it creates a weaker result, depending on how different the two parents are. Why do you think the traits of various ethnic groups were selected? Do you think they are randomly arranged? No, they were selected based on adaptations to the environment of that group of people. Mixing in differnet traits that do not fit well into that environment will result in those traits being removed.
'cept the kid will get picked on at school a lot more....
Hybrid Vigor FTW!
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Essentially, the article is implying that people in all geographical areas have been in interbreeding contact with peoples of all other geographical areas--within the last 5000 years!
It seems like some kind of feel-good rhetoric (we are all one people). Prove it.
Junk Science FTL!
I speak from experience -- and from half-way house. The only problem with a 16-year old wielding a revolver is that the police might arrest the punk. In most cases, a 16-year old will not be tried as an adult and will serve his sentence in a half-way house.
Nonetheless, a revolver works. Just do your best to avoid the pigs.
The article says all humans alive today can trace their ancestry to one person who lived between 5000 and 2000 BC. I call bullshit on that one. Have a look at the various places on Earth humans had already migrated to during that time frame, and you'll quickly realize that this theory is flawed somewhere. I suspect that this article has other motives.
CowboyNeal is my father.
The thought that I may share common ancestry with you or the numerous fools I have to deal with on a daily basis is somewhat discomforting.
Oh yea, because a statistician and a computer scientist are so infallible to being with, put them together and the result must be absolutely perfect!
That timeline seems absolutely ridiculous.
Some schools, yes. Mixed blood isn't such an issue in some places, like where I grew up in Hawaii. There might be issues with one of the originating ethnicities (haole, usually), but never from the fact that the kid has mixed blood.
Oh, just to clarify. "Haole" refers to foreigners, but has pretty much come to mean caucasian. The interesting thing is that the Portugese that came here many years ago aren't usually refered as Haole, dispite their european roots. Everybody was the same working in the cane fields, I guess ^_^
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
WE'RE ALL REDNECKS!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
But if you're one of the races that may have been dislocated due to the depradations of colonialism or slavery, you're pretty much denied any chance of a family tree dating back to the "Golden Age of Greece".
Yes, it comes off as a troll or flamebait, but that's not the intent. It's just a sad fact of history that there's a lot of people disconnected from their past due to the way the world operated at a particular point. So flame away, but I'd rather hear any ideas that could work around the problem.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
> every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone
> who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece
Yeah? Well I can trace my ancestry back to someone who is alive today!
Brian
Sorry, this annoyed me. There are plenty of Sunnis and Shiites in any extended Iraqi family today living happily side by side, not caring about the difference in hand positions during prayer. Sunnis and Shiites are not mortal enemies as is so lazily portrayed in the media. They fought along side each other in the war against Iran just 25 years ago for example. This generally artificial tension is being produced as a convenient cover for the disaster that is Iraq and gives Bushco the ability to walk away from their mess and blame it on civil war. As long as they keep the oil rich areas and the new military bases civil war it would even suit them. Hence this false meme.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
This is par for the course really.
The reality is there is a lot of inbreeding among most populations -- so much so that the bugaboo of "geographic race", which is supposed to be nothing more than folk taxonomy or folksonomy, is actually one of the strongest predictors of genetic makeup medical researchers can use without going to the level of an actual DNA assay. A lot of this brain noise can be traced back to a little academic slight of hand committed by Richard Lewontin when he published a peer-reviewed paper circa 1970 that studied the population structure of certain genes. He then went on to write a book which did not pass peer review but which got a lot of publicity for the claim that "there is more variation within than between races" -- an idiom that is now part of the catechism of liberal arts academia.
Well, unfortunately, this was an appealing fallacy, as shown by one of the grand old men of population genetics, AWF Edwards in Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's fallacy published under the peer-reviewed Bioessays about 30 years after Lewontin's non-peer-reviewed popular science book posing as academic debunking of popular prejudice. Why so long before such a peer-reviewed debunking? Well, this is the clever part -- Lewontin never bothered to publish his little catechism in any peer reviewed paper so there was never any basis for answering it within academia. Edwards actually had to depart somewhat from academic convention in addressing a popular misconception posing as academic wisdom that had influenced the government and culture profoundly for an entire generation!
Seastead this.
By the article's argument, when you go back 40 generations, you have 2^40 ancestors, or 4 quadrillion ancestors. This is clearly impossible. There simply weren't that many people alive then. So how do you explain the discrepency of numbers? Massive global inbreeding. Go back 10 generations, and you'll find that your family tree branches back on itself many times. The "mathematical" proof that everyone's related is not proof at all. There's nothing to indicate truly common ancestry. In fact, the current level of mobility that many people experience is orders of magnitude greater than what most kings experienced even as little as 500 years ago. It's a silly article.
Ah, but environments change too. When Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere, they brought with them various Eurasian diseases, like smallpox. If you didn't survive those diseases in Europe, you died, so it was safe to say that the visitors had some degree of genetic capacity to endure. But the natives had nothing, and died in record numbers. It's possible that the offspring of a native and a European would be more likely to survive, say, a case of smallpox, than a person with two native parents. When the environment changes, the traits required change too.
They must surely be referring to the Greek king Krassas Bacon.
Taking that train of thought even further, having such a pedigree to show that you really have 'pure' WASP ancestry (for example, though practically impossible) would be a badge of honor for white supremisist groups (and any other hatemongering clubs). Though kimvette is right, it wouldn't do anything but inflame cultural disparity, as racism isn't based on anything logical or rational, but is a completely irrational hatred of anyone different than they are.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
So, it's true?
Richard Dawkins writes in The Ancestors Tale (page 43, "The Tasmanian's Tale") that roughly 80 percent of all invidiviuals of a current population will be universal ancestors to all living decendants a certain number of generations later. How many generations? That depends on the populations size: roughly the base 2 logarithm of the population size number of generations. This is more true for small, isolated populations, especially on islands (Tasmania is given as example) - you can not take the current population of people on earth today (6 billions) and trust this number.
You have been traced back to the ape. Don't forget to put him into the familiy tree!
but I dunno. I mean, they still give me mod points every other week, and I just close my eyes and click.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Don't for a second think that any race has a monopoly on bad behavior.
There is no race anywhere that has a past free of committing "depradations" on their neighbors.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I mean, statistically speaking, you are worthless, but there's always the chance you're not.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Dude...are you asking if he screwed his niece?
So now it is more accurate to use DNA than a familty tree?
Forgot to click on the "Post Anonymously" this time?
Those wacky christians were right all along, who would have thought it..
God Be Gone
These results are not surprising considering that we all descend from Noah who according to tradition lived around 2000-2500 BC. Of course, most people here will cry foul. The Bible couldn't possibly be true, right? Or could it?
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
is passed through the female line. As the Roman author had it, mater certus, pater semper incertus est (The mother is certain, the father always uncertain.)
Pining for the fjords
Every human on Earth can trace our ancestries to someone who lived as recently as the Abraham Lincoln administration. Unless they spent some generations on another planet, or were recently created by an upstart god who got funding for Creation 2.0.
Really, what an insipid take on human descent. The writers might find plenty of inspiration in thinking that every warring religious faction is made of mere cousins. But the real agenda here is to say that our "common ancestors" were Adam and Eve, cryptoreligious "science" that insists the world was created around 6-7000 years ago. Statistical oversimplifications claiming "mathematical certainty" are easy meat for half-bright reporters. But when they don't bother to explain how isolated populations like deep Amazonian tribes factor into the "probability model", it's clear they're looking for data to fit their foregone conclusion. People who first encountered Europeans in the past few dozen years, whose ancestors migrated from Asia probably 30,000 years ago, are the obvious distant relatives to explain, not Palestinians and Jews who have already been experimentally demonstrated.
--
make install -not war
> It's a silly article.
It's not. Of course I don't know all the details of the study, but the article clearly explains it was a lot smarter than you assume. Some relevant fragments:
It's nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you've got a million ancestors. By the 13th you've got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century just 40 generations ago the number tops a trillion.
But wait. How could anybody much less everybody alive today have had a trillion ancestors living during the 9th century?
The answer is, they didn't. Imagine there was a man living 1,200 years ago whose daughter was your mother's 36th great-grandmother, and whose son was your father's 36th great-grandfather. That would put him on two branches on your family tree, one on your mother's side and one on your father's.
[...]
The researchers knew they would have to account for geography to get a better picture of how the family tree converges as it reaches deeper into the past. They decided to build a massive computer simulation that would essentially re-enact the history of humanity as people were born, moved from one place to another, reproduced and died.
[...]
Allowing very little migration, Rohde's simulation produced a date of about 5,000 B.C. for humanity's most recent common ancestor. Assuming a higher, but still realistic, migration rate produced a shockingly recent date of around 1 A.D.
[...]
Migration is the key. When a people have offspring far from their birthplaces, they essentially introduce their entire family lines into their adopted populations, giving their immediate offspring and all who come after them a set of ancestors from far away.
Lot's of additional interesting tid-bits in that article. Worth a read IMO.
A way to visualize what he is saying would be to take two overlapping cones/triangles, one with the point aiming up, one with the point aiming down, like a star-of-david, or an angular hourglass.
The cone with the point at the top represents one person (A, for ancestor) who lived X years ago and their descendants. The cone with the point at the bottom represents one person (D for descendant) who lives today and their ancestors. Any overlap is where A and D share mutual ancestors/descendants.
Using this representation, the argument here is that there exists (erm, existed) a person A, for whom every human who is alive today falls into their descendancy cone. Or more importantly, they assert that this is inevitable, and sufficient time has passed such that it has already happened. The key, according to this visual model, is that "now" is below the line where the two cones cross.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
What a great point, which is probably why it was specifically addressed in the article. Your arguments may carry more weight if they indicate you actually familiarized yourself with the information before criticizing it.
The original research article begs to differ with your claim that there's "nothing to indicate truly common ancestry." They refer to a published paper, for instance, that used probabilistic analysis to prove that the number of generations back to the most recent common ancestor is distributed with a peak at about log2 of the size of the initial population.
Further, the concept of mobility is one of the fundamental points of the research. The above figure, log2(n), is based on pretty much random mating (i.e. complete migration, in a sense). This paper extended that research by greating reducing the amount of migration allowed and by dividing up the world into continents, countries, and towns with roughly reasonable populations for the areas. The simulation also includes the effects of more recent migration by increasing the number of ports available after the year 1500 (ports are special locations in the world through which migration is modelled). One quote from the article: "With 5% of individuals migrating out of their home town, 0.05% migrating out of their home country, and 95% of port users born in the country from which the port emanates, the simulations produce a mean MRCA date of 1,415 BC and a mean IA date of 5,353 BC."
I'll close with one other quote regarding the realism of the parameters:
"Arguably, this simulation is far too conservative, especially given its prediction that, even in densely populated Eurasia, only 55.3 people will leave each country per generation in AD 1500. If the migration rate among towns is increased to 20%, the local port users are reduced to 80%, and the migration rates between countries and continents are scaled up by factors of 5 and 10, respectively, the mean MRCA date is as recent as AD 55 and the mean IA date is 2,158 BC."
note: MRCA = most recent common ancestor, IA = identical ancestor
note 2: the paper in which the log2(n) figure was derived is Chang, J. T. Recent common ancestors of all present-day individuals. Adv. Appl. Probab. 31, 10021026, 10271038 (1999)
This leads me to ask if there are any good reccomended open source family tree software. I'm especially interested in web-based software that my family can make changes to from around the world. It sounds like a fun project, I can't be the only one. Any ideas?
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
"Ad hominem attacks, what a great way to demonstrate your point."
Arguing with AC arguments are by their nature rarely worth it.
Thats a value statement.
Try this instead: I'll ask a question.
When did you stop beating your wife?
"think of it as evolution in action"
Curiously, the nature of genetic disease suggests that if you want to ensure the survival of your descendants into the eons upon eons, you should marry outside of your ethnic group
:)
Seems pretty obvious to me. Any (positive as well as negative) traits get amplified by breeding within a small group. Mixing genes within a large population will dilute all traits.
That mixing must have a positive effect overall. It has been shown that what we consider beautiful in people is what is closest to the average (size, facial features etc.) Did anybody else notice that people who are mongrels generally look better than "true breds"? Think Halle Berry vs. Prince Charles
So... we evolved to find people with very mixed pedigree more attractive than others. There must be a reason (i.e. evolutionary advantage) for this. Low risk of genetic defects is a very reasonable one.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
The logic of this article reminded me of this hillbilly classic: I'm My Own Grandpaw.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Our bodies consist of atoms which were one time shared with virtually anyone who ever lived. I assume that the cycles intermingling carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen are tremendously efficient. Plants, humans and animals all breathe and drink from the same pool of air and water.
It would be interesting to see a model demonstrating how quickly the first few exhalations of a newborn are shared by every living human.
Be heard || Be herd
But the real agenda here is to say that our "common ancestors" were Adam and Eve, cryptoreligious "science" that insists the world was created around 6-7000 years ago.
Brilliant, insightful thinking. It was there at the back of my mind but you crystallized it. The time frame used is an artificial (and meaningless) one - apart that the subtext seems to confirm that 6000 years ago we all had common ancestors. Well, duh, of course - obviously excluding 'islands' of population as you mentioned. You could go back 60,000 years and say exactly the same thing too. They either survived or died (in a genetic sense) is all that TFA boils down to.
This is some kind of psy-op piece that could easily be misinterpreted by Joe Sixpack® as provision of 'hard scientific proof' for Adam & Eve mythology.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
nt
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Solution: Move out of red-state territory.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
Yeah, it's BS. Consider the Australian aborigines. Or the people of New Guinea. Or even native Americans. It nonsensical on the face of it.
--MarkusQ
Is parthogenesis inbreeding?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
The offspring of an Eskimo-African couple will typically have a stronger set of genes than the offspring of an Eskimo-Eskimo couple, a German-German couple, or a Vietnamese-Vietnamese couple.
This makes no sense.
The offsprings of to compleatly healthy parents can only get a genetic defect by external influences, like virus infections during pregnancy, posions(chemicals) or radiation etc.
If the parents have 100% perfect genes, the children will have as well. No matter how close the parents are related.
Your above conclusion is completely wrong, a mildly genetic defected Vietnamse (lets say red/green colour blind defect on one cromosome, not on both) and a mildly defected Escimo (Inuit) (lets say mongoloism on one chromosome) will have:
25% completely healthy children (neither red/green colour blindness nor mongoloism got transfred but the healthy parts of the paretns chromosome sets)
25% will only have the colour blindness genes from
one
parent but the healthy set of the Escimo (which results in a not colour blind offspring, but he weares the defect)25% will only have
one
chromosoem set defected by mongoloism, but be healthy as the chromosomes from the other parent will fix it25% will have both defects, but the opposing set of the other parent will fix it, so they appear not ill.
Bottom line all offsprings appear healthy but 75% of them wear the defect genes.
OTOH if 2 parents with both a defect on only one chromosome (red/green colour blind) get children it looks like this:
25% are completely healthy, inheriting the non defect copy of the chromosome from each parent
25% have the defect chromosome from the mother, but appear healthy
25% have the defect chromosome from the father, but appear healthy
25% have the defect chromosome from the mother
AND
the defect chromosome from the father and appear illConclusion: interbreeding in a narrow gene pool only has a negative effect if there are defect genes in it (or get added by mutating effects). As long as parents "appear" not ill and only "carry" the defect the defect gene is "thinned" out over several generations
if
only completely healthy (no defect at all) mates come into the bloodline. The idea that 2 mildly defected groups of seperated populations will "heal" their combined offsprings is completely wrong, in fact 25% of them will be more ill than the parents.Contrary to popular beliefe, there is
no
stronger set of genes , either it is defect or it is not, and the way how it is inherited by offsprings is simple combination.angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I am very skeptical about this. It really defies common sense. If you were to tell me I was related to Atilla the hun, I might think its possible (I am over European heritage). But if you were to tell me that a very japanese person was related to a pure aboriginal australian as recently as 5000 years ago, I very much doubt it. There are obscure corners of the gene pool that just don't mix very much.
What makes this study even more suspect is the proclamations of 'brotherhood', blah blah blah that seem to want to try to create 'world peace'. I wonder if someone had a desired outcome and built an experiment to reach those results.
What really cooks the noodle is that 'genetic' likenesses of you/me can pop-up over a few millenium. Time to warm up the Beowolf to model that!
Take a native american in the 1700s. Is he descended from some greek guy 3000 years earlier? I have my doubts -- if I recall my anthropology, the natives came here long before Greece was a major power. If there are any purebred native americans around today, then you'd have to go back a lot more than 3000 years to find an ancestor that he has in common with, say, a bushman in Africa.
Now that is patently false. You could hardly be more wrong if you tried.
Hard data for humans is sparse because of obvious ethical reasons, but for example the vast majority of corn grown is some sort of hybrid.
check out Heterosis.
My mod points have run out, but you have the most insightful and interesting post in the whole discussion. The problem is now that thousands of people who read the summary without even thinking about it will now be running around telling all their friend "everyone's got a common ancestor who lived in 500BC".
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
That's what it's for, actually. Any child has a mix of genes. Also there are two copies for each gene, one from the father, one from the mother. Many defective genes are recessive, meaning that if you have just one of the defective ones, it will not become active. However if you happen to inherit it both from your father and from your mother it must become active. That's why it's not a great idea to have offspring with a close relative. There is a great illustration here, if you are interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recessive_genes
True that. However as you pointed out, we travel a fair bit these days. Being adapted for the climate of Ireland (where it's good to have fair skin) is no longer all that useful when you spend your life in Florida. Of course, many people don't really do that anymore - they move many times in their own lifetimes, so it's not like adapting to just one of these locations would make a lot of sense.
Some populations in Polynesia, Australia, New Guinea and South America, say, almost certainly have members who share no ancestry with the rest of the world.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You are right for a very limited value of right. However, have you ever heard of hybridism? Or inbreeding? If the ofsping of an eskimo/austrailian aborigine were dumped in the outback, he would do worse in the heat and sun and local deseases than the pure aborigianl ofspring, who would in turn fare worse dumped above thae artic circle. However, the pure offspring is much more likely to get wiped out by some genetic disease or introduced disease than the child of mixed offspring. However, when was the last time sitting around in a desert was truly part of human survival? Im willing to guess that the kid with the far spread genes will survive much better than any kind of "purebread" anscestor in any given city on the planet.
ANyhow, the differences in human genes are so neglegible as to make this largely a moot point.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Hmm. Well, I'm thoroughly "white", but I'm roughly 1/4th Sicilian, 1/4th Irish (through English conquest), and about 1/2 "Dutch/Norse/English American", with a dash of Native American thrown in.
My wife is about 3/8ths German, 1/8th Sioux (Native American), 1/4th Irish, and the rest she's not really sure about.
So, while our children might not be as "genetically sound" as someone of Eskimo/Black breeding, they're certainly going to be well blended...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
We are all members of a single tribe of humans dating back about 8-10 thousand years. We are all ancestors of the tribe that began the "agricultural revolution." The time when we decided that humans, after living for hundreds of thousands of years within the laws of life and being an extremely successful species, were no longer bound by those silly rules which make life work. Not only that, every tenet of our tribe says that we must live completely opposed to those rules. Not only that, but they also tell us that this is the only right way to live. The only way to be human. How many times do you hear the phrases (or use them yourself) being treated like a human being or acting like a decent human? Believe it or not, there is no such thing.
It is true, we are all decendents of Adam. Not in the literal sense, but look at it like this. The story of Adam and Eve dates back as far as we know to the beginning of history. History was begun during this time period. This story was not our story originally. It was a story told about us, by those who were living near us and saw how we spent our lives. It was their explanation for why anyone would live such a toilsome and pitiful life. "These people live as though they had the very knowledge of the Gods, believing they know Good from Evil. Believing they know what should live and what should die. They Gods have damned them for this, that must be why they would live their lives not in the way everything else lives; in the garden of Eden where all is provided. Instead they are cursed to forever live by the sweat of their brow, pulling their food from the ground. Do not live this way." That's what the story is about. We took the story as our own as we were conquering our neighboring tribes. That's just how we do it. Assimilate or destroy. Manifest destiny. For a recent example that's easy to relate to, look at our conquest of the US from the natives who had been here for a long, long time. It's just how our tribe works.
I go on endlessly. I think this is the most important thing in the world for anyone to realize. We are not humanity. We are one tribe, who have long overstepped our bounds in pursuit of a lifestyle that is not sustainable. And like the old wives' tale of the frog in boiling water, we're lulled to sleep as we burn alive. I would like nothing more than to spit out that damned apple and walk away...but our tribe will not allow this to happen. Nothing is allowed to live outside of our ways.
Gah, I lose my train of thought entirely and I have to go to work. Go read some of the stuff this guy writes on the subject. He's far more coherent on the subject than I.
Genealogists discover royal roots on every family tree
In which they discuss the royal roots of Brooke Shields.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing -- at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
then there is this old link to the notion of the Most Recent Common Ancestor of Mankind.
The huge number of proven descents of people from common European royal ancestry in historical times, when considered with the vastly greater number of descents that must exist but are not among the rare few that can be proven, suggest strongly that everyone, in the West at least, is descended from an MRCA in historical times. They suggest, for example, that everyone in the West is descended from Charlemagne, c. 800 AD.
It would seem possible that, even with a lot of geographical separation, the MRCA of the entire world is still within historical times, 3000 BC - 1000 AD. In fact, it is quite likely the entire world is descended from the Ancient Egyptian royal house, c. 1600 BC.
We pick them as an example because they left proven descents for centuries, so it seems likely their descents did not die out, and they are ancestors of some people alive today. Hence probably ancestors of all people alive today.
Quite likely almost everyone in the world descends from Confucius, c. 500 BC. We pick him as an example because he is the proven ancestor of some people alive today. Hence probably the ancestor of all people alive today.
Atlantic Magazine, among others, had a story on this a few years back.
The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Conclusion: interbreeding in a narrow gene pool only has a negative effect if there are defect genes in it
It is a matter of established fact that all individuals have some of what you would call "defect" genes. You have defect genes. Go get yourself a full-on genetic profile if you think I'm not telling the truth, or ask any biologist.
The reason for the "defect" genes is multi-fold. One is that evolution produces adequate, not optimal, solutions to the problem of survival. The other is that genes for some genetic diseases are implicated in resistance to particular environmental threats--I believe the gene that produces sickle cell annemia is correlated with resistance to malaria, for example.
To believe in the possibility of a "perfect" organism with no deleterious genes is to believe in a myth or a lie, because what counts as "defect" or "benefit" will change with the circumstances, but your genes will most certainly not do so.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
You know, it was on a Saturday night, after a really long week, and I have never drank that much before, and I honestly don't remember what all happened for the rest of that weekend. I swear, they told me they were over 16...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
mater : mother.
certus : undoubted, certain, sure, settled, resolved, decided / definite
mas maris m. [the male; manly , vigorous].
All translations from http://archives.nd.edu/latgramm.htm
It only takes one European crossing the ocean to make Americans start popping out babies with European heritage. Let simmer a few generations and the whole idea becomes plausible.
Note that it could just as easily have been a lone American crossing to Europe.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
There is no rationale behind it whatsoever and having a pedigree to show that say, (for the most common example) a white supremacist and Martin Luther King Jr. share common ancestors 60 or so generations back would not change their attitudes.
I agree it won't change their attitude, but given the deplorable fact of extensive inter-breeding between mostly black slaves and mostly-white plantation owners prior to the Civil War, it is extremely likely that a white supremacist in the U.S. South and Martin Luther King Jr. would share a common ancestor a lot less than 60 generations back.
The idea of "racial purity" is a myth for stupid people, and as more knowledge of human genetics and human ancestry accumulates this will become so obvious that even people stupid enough to be racists will have a hard time avoiding it. We will find there is a literal handful of "racially pure" people on the planet, and they will be from isolated tribes who simply lacked the opportunity to practice the vigorous out-breeding that is part of humanity's evolutionary modus operandi.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Thus, we can deduce that it seems unreasonable to believe in such a choke-point. Ok, now can I test this theory? Sure. There are genetic markers in parts of Europe which date back to early stone-age migrants. We have cases where direct ancestors of such migrants are known, the most famous being a school teacher who matches perfectly with 6,000 year old bones found in a cave near the Cheddar Gorge. Their DNA markers are generally considered "rare" (less than 1% of the population). For the claim to be correct, then either their mtDNA or yDNA must coincide with other people. It doesn't, beyond tracing back to mtEve or yAdam.
Now, isolated populations get interesting. The Australian Aborigines are the earliest surviving migrants from Africa (apart from a family group that split off somewhere in India) and it would be utterly impossible for such migrants to share ANY DNA whatsoever with other peoples after their point of divergence. The stone-age peoples in Papau New Guinea, or on the islands around Sri Lanka, are likely to be equally ancient, as they don't interact with modern peoples. I am not sure what confidence researchers have that these have DNA that are within mtEve or yAdam, as obtaining DNA samples from peoples who are vehemently protective of their communities (to the point of lobbing spears at people delivering emergency aid after the tsunami) must be hard.
It would not surprise me if there exists a community isolated enough that it does not fit within the mtEve/yAdam model - more than one woman and man existed at those times, it's just the other lines haven't made it to the modern day amongst mainstream populations, but this does NOT mean that no other lines survived at all. We simply don't know where they are, if they do. But truly isolated groups may well include such lines, if it is simply not possible for researchers to test them. We can draw no inferences from data we have never collected, particularly when it comes to populations so obscure or remote that we don't even know for sure if they still exist.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I've just completed a bachelor's degree in Biology and a graduate level course in evolutionary genetics and I have never heard of these kinds of statements from any scientific source. In fact, the only place I have heard them from were from people who stress racial purity and--more specifically--white supremacy.
Regardless, what you're saying is ridiculous. Humans are the most prolific mammal on the face of the earth; we're everywhere. We are this way because it is our nature to be both curious and aggressive. You're not giving our ancestors or the human drive for exploration enough credit. Besides, even under your theory, how did the individual ethnic groups arrive in their respective regions were it not for this migration, mmm? (Hint for the uninitiated: the typical answer to this is "God put them there.")
For any human population a certain number of migrants is a given. This inevitably creates geneflow between populations which are otherwise isolated. The result is that human populations are generally homogenous, despite the great geographic distances separating the groups themselves. A very extreme example of this effect is demonstrated with ring species, whose sub-populations are actually infertile with one another (clearly not the case with people) but still maintain a common character (ie. they do not diverge) because of geneflow.
To be certain, there are differences between racial and ethnic groups, but these differences are superficial and do not reflect the genome as a whole. Scientific studies of DNA microsattelites have confirmed this time and time again. In fact, the study in the article is just one of many.
Yes and no. What you're talking about is a homozygous advantage. For many populations this is true--but not for people. Why? Because we aren't necessarily beholden to our environments anymore. If you're less tolerant of the sun, you can wear sunscreen. If you're less tolerant to the heat, you can get air conditioning. Even in the most extreme cases, homozygous advantage doesn't apply. For instance, populations that have lived in the Andes mountains have developed genetic adaptations that allow them to breathe in much lower concentrations of oxygen than normally allowed. And yet, still, most tourists to these mountains are still able to survive (and even enjoy themselves) by supplementing their oxygen.
But if no the environment, what are humans subject to? Their own genes. To some extent this can be compensated for. (I know I for one would probably have died in ages past because of my nearsightedness.) But even with today's technology, genetic defects are often untreatable and sometimes fatal. This is particularly relevant in the case of recessive genetic disorders, where the extreme effects of a homozygous recessive trait can be masked. This creates a situation where heterozygotes are superior, because of a reduced likelihood of genetic disorders. I'm pretty sure this is the scientific basis of the OP's more-simplified statements.
In practice, however, this is often difficult to take advantage of because our assignment of race is completely arbitrary and based upon the phenotype of an individual and not his or her genotype. So, for instance, a black and white couple in Claxton, Georgia (a historic site of genetic samplin
Just wanted to say that I'm happy for you, even as an AC. :)
That said, the religious status (priest/Levite, Cohain), tribe, and inheritance are all passed through the father. For instance, David was the scion of Saul. His mother was irrelavent to his being King of Isreal.
"Some idiot with a PhD in molecular genetics (not population genetics) while debating me once blurted out that the human race is in a "Hardy-Wienberg Equilibrium", which is essentially the impression intended by the referenced article."
The "idiot" was wrong, but so are you: the article makes no reference to Hardy-Weinburg equilibria, nor does it need to -- it doesn't discuss allele frequencies.
"What HRE means is that there is no "population structure" such as "races" -- which plays very well with the PC Feelgoodism that has been elevated to a state of theocratic dogma by the current zeigeist pervading not just media and academia but governmental circles."
Whoa...settle down, there, Cletus. The liberals aren't coming to get you today!
Incoherent, vaguely conservative ranting about "dogma" and "zeigests" aside, you don't understand the definition of Hardy-Weinburg equilibria (perhaps that's why you're so upset!) Simply put, HRE tells us how to predict the stable frequencies of dominant and recessive alleles within a closed population. It's a fundamental theorem of population genetics, not a wedge issue in the Culture War.
This article is about ancestry, and makes a simple mathematical argument that human beings are all related. It doesn't make a commentary about race or geographical diversity. Get a grip.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I thought racial differences such as black or white skin were assumed to take tens of thousands of years to develop. So how can this be true if all ancestors were common 7.000 years ago?
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
and me im a sort of celtic mix with a bit of lithuanian mixed in (ive got ancestors from ireland scotland france spain and germany -- and the lithuanian)
funny thing is my folks weren't on the "right side" of a war until the Civil War.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
claim to be the actual desecendents of Abraham (which Jesus claimed as well) -- no spirituality involved. Male Jews according to legend would have the exact same Y chromosome as Abraham carried unless a male ancestor was Jewish by conversion. This would mean for instance that all Levites and CoHain would have the same Y chromosome (which amazingly enough, about 50% of CoHain do). Christians never claimed blood descent as far as I know (although early Christians who were Jewish did, but it had nothing to do with being Christian). Christians as far as I know consider themselves the spiritual descendents of Abraham.
...father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.
So what does that make us?
Absolutely nothing!
http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_an
ok, it seems to vary from about 5%, but rates of 20% - 30% are common. So... Guys... have you had a DNA test?
Deleted
evil devil people! every body know that we was all come downe from adam and the whore eve who rode to church on dino-saurs on sundays! this is what jesus teches us.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
... But I just don't accept these finding as fact. I can't imagine a native Aborigine (who migrated out of Africa to their islands around 40000 years ago and didn't have much contact with the rest of the world until the past 500-600 years) and a native American, or Chinese as having the same parents 5000 years ago. It doesn't add up.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Aren't there any Native American persons with any ancestors who lived in the Americas in the time when the article claims our ancestors were all in the other hemisphere? There are no verified stories of mating of Old World and New World people for about 10,000 years up until 1492. So how can all our ancestors have been in the Old World at any time during that period?
"That was never intended to be a genetic claim but a spiritual one. Think of it something like adoption."
Reinterpretation is the vaseline of religious intercource. -- The Creator
FRA: STFU GTFO
Okay, let's do a thought experiment.
Let's pretend that about 25,000 years ago (Or any year prior to the article's assertion), humanity was divided in half with no contact possible between them.
Based on statistical methods alone (and I realize their methods were a little more complex), this model and a model where all humans has access to each other would lead to similar conclusions. Obviously these conclusions would be inaccurate for at least one of these models.
I call bullshit.
Your asking that like its a bad thing. It is my firm belief that the family that sleeps together stays together.
Angel Boris actually has a Bacon Number of 2:
1. Angel Boris was in Suicide Blonde (1999) with Robert Deacon
2. Robert Deacon was in Wild Things (1998) with Kevin Bacon
(Source: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia)
Which makes three steps from you to Kevin Bacon. HTH, HAND!
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Bullshit - there is tons of evidence of travel all over the ancient world. Tribes we know about in historical times travelled hundreds and even thousands of miles during times of conquest.
Bullshit - you must have failed high school biology. The term "hybrid vigor" refers to the improved freedom from genetic disease among those very distantly related. That's because recessive genes in one population collide often in decendants, creating unusual genetic diseases - this is a known fact in areas with long-term inbred aristocracies - see European monarchs. It's a known fact among populations with a long history of limited genetic transfer - as you wrongly suppose to be true of the human race as a whole; see Ashkhenazi Jews and various neurologic diseases. Damn, even anyone involved in animal breeding knows this - it's why most purebreds don't live very long and why breeds that become very popular very quickly can be "overbred".
Besides, if you were correct, then the best genetic result would be to fuck your sister. And every population on the planet knows that incest is a bad idea, even if they don't know why. Except, apparently, in your family.
Shit, you have to be dumb as a rock to believe what you wrote. Try to get your family tree to fork a little more often.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
have aboriginies been in Australia then? Just a couple thousand years we're now supposed to believe.
And that land bridge connecting tasmania? Went away real fast, didn't it?
I'm sure people of the Nhaowa(pop)mwhd(click-click)dghuhu tribe in darkest africa will be surprised to learn that they've all come from a Shiite muslim, the definition for which was set at most 1,300 years ago.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
OK, the theory takes no account of isolated populations, so it's stupid. In fact, the last common ancestor would be determined by the most isolated population, plus the time for the genes to spread through that population.
So which population is the most isolated, in this sense? Remember, to be isolated you need to have had no contact at all for quite some time.
There's lots of places with minimal contact (highland New Guinea, Easter Island, the Canary islands before 1500 or so) but very few with none at all.
Any thoughts?
AFAIK these differences take less than 10000 years to develope. Anyway, from this set of ancestors, not all have to look the same. Imagine half look black, half white. And if you look white, maybe your white ancestors appear each 5000 times as on your family tree, and the black ones only once...
but I still hate the Dutch. And the Belgians, because they share a border with the Dutch.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm a gentile who is fairly familiar with Jews for Jesus.
:) For what it's worth, I'd love to hear a Jew explain to me how the foundation of Christianity - the birth of Christ - is best understood as an extension of what Judaism teaches.
What they claim is that they are Jews by heritage/nationality who are imperfect. They have placed their faith in Jesus Christ's perfect life and sufficient sacrifice to be saved from eternal separation from a holy and perfect God. They claim that faith in Christ is necessary for all men to have relationship with God, including Jews.
There is no "church of Jews for Jesus." There is nothing unique about their beliefs which substantively differentiates them from mainstream Christianity.
Their mission statement is:
"Jews for Jesus exists to make the messiahship of Jesus Christ an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide"
They don't surrender their heritage (and in many cases, their traditions) simply because they follow Christ. They don't believe that they get closer to God if they keep kosher, or any other traditions - they like the traditions they keep. As a gentile follower of Christ, I see much of Christian teaching portrayed in the Seder traditions. Jews for Jesus do too - that's why they invited you to dinner.
For what it's worth, if you want to found or operate an organization teaching people that the pathway to God is conversion to Judiasm, go ahead. I wouldn't call that a cult - I'd call it proselytizing.
Finally - the name of their organization has JESUS in it. It would be pretty hard for a college student to be tricked into thinking that JFJ isn't a Christian organization.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I don't think so. According to other recent calculations I've seen, it's more like 220 generations. Definitions notwithstanding, I think the 32 generations figure is quite off the mark.
Heard any good sigs lately?
The offsprings of to compleatly healthy parents can only get a genetic defect by external influences
Each generation adds 1.4 (or 1.6, not sure I remember correctly) 'fatal' mutations on average because the DNA copying machinery is not perfect. 'Fatal' meaning if they are present on both strands, a child will not survive to adulthood.
Bottom line all offsprings appear healthy but 75% of them wear the defect genes.
Most people have a similar number of genetic "defects". There are no genetically perfect people.
Conclusion: interbreeding in a narrow gene pool only has a negative effect if there are defect genes in it
Exactly. Which is *always* the case.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
'Fatal' meaning if they are present on both strands, a child will not survive to adulthood.
Oops, correction: Meaning will not procreate, i.e. not contribute to the gene pool (not survive to adulthood, be infertile, will not have viable offspring.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
The math only works if you assume that the ancestry never coincides with itself until it is mathematically impossible for it not to do so. This is ludicrous. Ancestry will coincide many, many times before that point. It is easy to demonstrate mathematically that it is more than possible for an ancestry to fold in on itself repeatedly, without touching other distinct lines.
The basic assumption (flawed), is that having trillions of "ancestors" means that it fold in across the entire spectrum of living people at a given time, when it can in fact fold in multiple times on a selection of that population; or that having any particular person as your ancestor is almost precisely as likely as any other arbitrary person. Historically, there are many social constrictions to make such statistics highly unlikely.
It also seems obvious to me, that were interracial marriages so common place so long ago (across the last few thousand years, even), the world would not be quite as genetically diverse a place as it currently is.
Disclaimer: IANAM(athematician). However, I do love math, and this seems like a fairly obvious and very easily provable flaw. I'm also probably misusing the phrase "fold in" above, though: but I imagine everyone can understand what I mean by that.
Iran isn't a Persian Country. Iran is a country that sits on the same location that Persia used to. Persia doesn't exist anymore. To call Iran a Persian Country would be like calling Mexico a North American country. It's true, but it's a feature of geography, not demographics.
Iranians are Caucasians (they're actually close to the Caucasus mountains for which the race is named) not Arabs, I think that is what you meant to say.
I agree with you about Bush Sr. He was wise to not go to Baghdad. He is a lot wiser than his son in many ways.
Not that it took a genius to realize that if you topple a minority-demographic dictator who holds down (not just lives with) a demographic who makes the majority of the country (at least in the South) it will produce a civil war. But apparently it took more brains than we had in the White House at the time.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Already done that, you insensitive clod!
- Annabelle Noonesproperty-hyphen
One being that Aboriginals appear to have started in the Middle East, so their ancestors would be related to everyone else; the second being that there are a number of unusual Aboriginals with (for example) Dutch ancestry kicking around.
There's a lot else about Australian Aboriginals which is unexpected, some of it fairly hair-raising and some very bland, but walking into the culture with your mental eyes closed is pretty much a recipe for hilarity^Wconfusion.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
given the deplorable fact of extensive inter-breeding between mostly black slaves and mostly-white plantation owners prior to the Civil War, it is extremely likely that a white supremacist in the U.S. South and Martin Luther King Jr. would share a common ancestor a lot less than 60 generations back.
Not likely. The typical white supremecist's ancestors would not have been able to afford slaves.
The idea of "racial purity" is a myth for stupid people
Yes.
Going through so many generations, it seems like a better approach would be to ask how many genes any two people are expected to share in common, which would encompass one or more mutual ancestors, some initial distribution of genes in the original pool and rates of mutation.
"I love his boyish charm, but I hate his childishness" - Leela
And that cheerleader had the nerve to call me shallow.
See, the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I took the liberty of correcting the grammer
There are several points to note concerning your rather bastardised approach to Mendelian genetics.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
There seems to be some kind of a fallacy operating here, which I don't quite understand, between this formal or mathematical notion of being somebody's ancestor or being descended from them, and the biological concept of inheritance in which you actually carry someone's genes (or they carry yours). I mean, my first generation of offspring has half my genes, the next generation has a quarter, then an eighth; if there are finite boundaries, then it must go effectively to zero. So, given that we have a finite number of genes, it would seem that there is a finite number of generations in which one set of genes is likely to be extinguished among at least some fraction of the descended population. So if I contribute my genes to a community -- say I fly to another continent by prehistoric rocket sled ten thousand years ago or whatever, and mate with one of the ones I find attractive, then her family decides to cook and eat me, really eager to show off this fire thing -- how many generations before most of my so-called "descendants" no longer carry any of my genes, even though some of them do carry some? Must happen eventually. But, this article considers all the formal descendants of Anonymous Prehistoric Coward the First to be actual biological descendants of Anonymous Coward -- or at least, it conflates the two notions into one -- as if we are related because my gene touched a gene that touched your gene, or something like that, just the same as if you actually have my freckles.
An interesting tangent to that is, we know my brother and I share, like, a lot of the same genes. If we both have descendants, and all this mixing happens, somewhere down the line our bloodlines cross again and some future descendant carries, say, the brown-eyed bullshitter gene. But whose descendant is he, mine or my brother's? And does it matter? We know he's our father's... but it's the same gene, anyway. Kind of becomes irrelevant, by that point.
I think if you get really careful about defining what you mean by relatedness, this article will end up making a lot more sense, but will have much less sweeping implications. But underlying it is still the moral fact, if you want to call it that, that we are all human beings and as individuals, are really just different examples of the same basic thing. The fact that any two of us "could" be related really means that the similarities outweigh the differences.
As with anything human, nothing is so clear cut.
When Buddhism was favored by Mauria Gupta dynasty of India, Buddhist priests/monks had huge political influence (which was held by Jains earlier). Tibet has become a theocracy with hierarchical order (Dali Lama at the top, Panchen lama next, etc.) and Buddhist monasteries became major political and military forces at different times in history. Buddhism split and spread out (Mahayana (sp?) to the norht to Tibet, China, Mongolia, etc., and to the south to Sri Lanka and Thailand), and Buddhism with political clouts manifested where Buddhism went.
Religion being a human affair, enough people get together around it, you can't prevent it from becoming political and the associated human sins.
Nobody does family history like the LDS church. Check out www.familysearch.org. You can even download free software. It is interesting some of the changes they are doing such as scanning in petabytes of microfilm and indexing it through thousands of volunteers. They are also going to try to make some sort of a world tree using a wiki-like format. I also believe they are going to incorporate GIS data so you can see where people have moved around.
In other words, the conclusion is false for entire individuals, but true for single genes or very tightly linked clusters.
Questions?
There is no rationale behind it whatsoever and having a pedigree to show that say, (for the most common example) a white supremacist and Martin Luther King Jr. share common ancestors 60 or so generations back would not change their attitudes.
Sure, but the ones with integrity (within their framework) would kill themselves and the rest would have less persuasive ability and be exposed as "mudpeople" and therefore be much less of a problem.
And "we're all related" to the human immuno deficiency virus. The most recent common ancestor argument is better but still highly misleading. The fact is that anyone with half a brain knows that the intended effect of statement's like the idiot's and that of the article is to give the impression that all or at least most genes that distinguish humans from other animals are in a HW equilibrium because there is no population structure worth discussing except in the fevered imaginations of "genetic determinists" -- a phrase which itself is the product of the fevered imaginations of guys like Lewontin and Gould. No one, not even the white supremacist anthropologists of the 19th century nor Nazi pseudoscientists believed there were no environmental influences.
Seastead this.
Ancestry is not determined by statistics like the people who did this exercise pretended it was. If it was we could prove dogs and cats all have recent common ancestry.
/. ?
The story is just some stunt by someone with an agenda.
Why was it even posted on
I actually think this dude is from China. China is probably one of the last cultures on Earth where being explicitly racialist or even racist is still ok in polite society and even taught in schools. If African Americans think racism is still bad in the US, they have no idea what sort of racism they are missing out on in China. Of course, adding that to the sort of psychotic nationalism that the government promotes, and you have a nation that's still sorta scary.
Of course, Asia as a whole isn't much better. The Japanese have an ethnic minority that are to this day treated like the lowest scum imaginable... even though outsiders cannot tell them apart from other Japanese. And of course, both the Japanese and the Chinese regard Koreans as scum.
I'm not trying to say that the West is perfect, but people often forget that at least in the West we've dealt and to some extent matured in how we deal with race in ways that more homogenous cultures so far have not.
I'd go a bit further in support of Olson's findings being able to coexist with m-Eve, y-Adam and the Toba bottleneck, but with the disclaimer that the planet is big enough and complex enough for outliers that his model misses.
In particular we know that the Tasmanians were truly isolated for more than 10K years and that while the pure line did not survive the British invasion, there are descendents of Tasmanians from -10K alive today, yet very clearly not everybody is descended from those Tasmanians, so Olson's supplementary claim that there is a single set of everybody's ancestors who were alive around -7K falls over.
I'd expect Tasmania is not even a unique exception, but others might be a lot harder to prove. Those outliers apart, the rest makes broad sense and the relative mobility of genes, might help resolve a few other misconceptions about recent human evolution, especially the post-modern selection pressures favouring poverty and stupidity.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
While there are other clues that any notion of extended periods of genetic isolation of Australia in recent millenia is misguided, the dingo argument puts that to rest. By the time of the British invasion, dingos had spread through out mainland Australia, but not Tasmania, which does at least provide an exception to Olsen's supplementary claim.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Land Bridge was caused by the Ice Age. It's been gone for 11,000 years. The Eve female, if she existed, is linked to us all on the matrilineal path, and lived in Africa 50,000 to 250,000 years ago.
As Richard Dawkins said, it's true indeed there was an 'ancestral Adam (and Eve)', but he could have lived ten or a hundred thousand years ago. The calculations they performed works with arbitrary variables they input and then wait what number comes out. Might be fun, like Google Trends, but ultimately inconsequential.
Authors don't understand the pigeonhole principle:
(From the FA): "Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree."
No, not at all. You could have, for example, two completely separate branches of humanity (say one in the Americas and one everywhere else) that never interbred except at the very beginning of the human species. Pigeonhole Principle. The only thing thats mathematically inevitable is that at least two ancestors somewhere is shared. Somewhere. For example, mathematically, a very prolific couple could have been responsible for all X billion people minus a small group living in an uncharted area, whose roots go all the way back to the beginning.
Bad math, shame on the authors for writing it.
first off, jesus couldnt be the messiah. it wouldnt matter if he was god if fact that would make it even less possible then. the messiah or more properly mosiach has to be human. an everyday flawed human, not perfect at all. in fact read this so i dont have to spell it out for you http://www.jewsforjudaism.org/ that gives a basis of info about how jesus could not be the messiah. wanna go a little more indepth on judaism here www.jewfaq.org
;) )
next wow jesus was acclaimed to rise from the dead.. that was a common belief of jews back then that the righteous will come back to life. of course then theres the whole thats when the messiah comes and takes over the world and then destroys all weapons and everyone believes in god.. hmm still hasnt happened..
even more ironic is the fact that its actually believed by jews that every generation someone is born with the potential to be the messiah. its whenever god calls on him that shit hits the fan.
next islam and christianity are very similar you can basically sum up islam as christianity without the letters of paul and without jesus as messiah there you go islam.(note that is just summing it up
to add as a later note satan is actually just a name for a test from god not some cast down angel.. it was actually a king that god cast down and some christians wanted a dualistic sense to the bible so they rewrote that. and on top of the read the chapter of isaiah youll find it plainly in it that god created evil.
and why oh why couldnt if somehow there was a supposed "devil" could he not create evil. simple that would mean he would have created something from nothing, which in turn would make him actually as powerful as god, and only god can create from nothing duh.
so when you do something bad dont blame the nonexistant devil and say "the devil made me do it" blame god and say "god made me do it" oh and btw its the fact that we actually posses this dual nature good and evil that makes us in the image of god not are bodily form. in fact we have to have evil just use it with good judgement. for instance if your hungry youll work to buy or grow your own food. or work to get something you like. that is actually evil because your doing things for yourself. if you where pure good you would never eat or anything because it would infringe upon people and it would be doing something for yourself.
and there is no such thing as original sin, its your fault you mess up not some person in the past. it was just a way to pin the blame on someone else.. look into judaism it tells you that plainly, jews dont believe in original sin its really your fault..
oh man i could write an entire thesis on this.. wait i already did to bad its not still on the pc or i woulda just copied it on but hopefully this crappy summary sums some of it up.
maybe some one else mentioned this already and i just missed it but doesnt it seem a bit absurd to anyone else the suggestion that humanity's one common ancestor was around during the golden age of greece? how the hell would said ancestor make it down into australia or the americas fast enough to become the single common ancestor for all of humanity? i'm certain that south america and australia still have blood lines that havent been touched by individuals from outside their continent and those populations were established well before the golden age of greece.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
... is the secondary claim which the 10+K separation of Tasmanians and continued existence of a small pool of their mixed descendants invalidates.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
...should one happen to be hungry enough, I guess.
At base, it's a pretty direct way to having people stare at you and maybe warn you about things like sticks, pitfalls, snakes and so on. Maybe.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Not likely. The typical white supremecist's ancestors would not have been able to afford slaves.
Um, not. Great-granddaddy was poor white racist trash, coming from probably your typical subsistence farming South Carolina background, and his family owned slaves (just a few) before the war. This was normal - even the slightly better-off poor had slaves.
Also, need I mention Trent Lott or Strom Thurmond?
The most powerful warrior tribe in all of Africa, responsible for selling most of the slaves who labored in America (north, central and south), inventors of the blues (have a listen, it's where the american slaves took the style of music) and fully matriarchial society.
A blip on the radar they are not.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
They'll probably deal with it just as the creationists do: by ignoring the evidence.
>every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC).
In fact every human on earth can trace their ancestry to someone who live in the 20th or 19th century.
... the relatively recent origins of every human on earth.
Indeed, it has been found out that nobody living on Earth today goes back more than about 100 to 120 years at most!!
We know where you are comming from, it is patently obvious you will not see your own community's shortcomings and that you have been indoctrinated quite successfully.
So spare us all the propaganda please.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Blues is an US invention.
It is like saying that Italians invented blues because Africanamericans used the conventions laid down by Guido Daretzo...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You are guessing about hoa many children will your realtives in the future have.
The study and the GP post deal with a mathematical certainity: the number of ancestors anybody has is 2, no more, no less. The interesting conclussion is that your family tree is not a neat tree where each node open 2 new branches, but that for certain many nodes originate different branches that coincide again in the future.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
every human on earth can trace their ancestry back to someone who may have lived as recently as the Golden Age of Greece (around 500 BC)
. . . is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Did they previously think that perhaps some of us just spontaneously appeared out of thin air, and do not have any ancestors from that time period?
-BK
Chemical Blog
People know I've been hit by a car, dragged, fallen from a moving car, and generally had some big rocks hit me in the side & back of the head. And drowned. One of my sons was taken down recently by leukemia at 28 years of age, so I haven't been hit with that yet. Measles, mumps twice both sides, chickenpox, but Polio missed me. Hit the boy 3 houses up the street though. Mom was half Indian so we ended up having a matriarchal home pretty much. A poor choice. A home should not be led by the lower IQ parent. Ultimately the male child will exceed her and have little direction but be subjected to "You should do this" or "You should do that" on my Say So, with no supporting arguments good enough to help the male children. Might be sufficient for girls...
Although the article presents a neat mathematical trick, it seems to fail to take into account geagraphical separation.
I'm trying to figure out how I had ancestors in the Americas 5000 years ago if they supposedly came accros the land bridge 100,000 years ago. Or how Autralian Aboringese come into my family tree?
Unless maybe Thor Heyerdahl was right, and people really were travering the globe back then.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
And I read a posting from this guy on /. who was five steps from Kevin Bacon. That makes me six steps from Kevin Bacon. Wheee, I'm cool!
Let's just hope your family tree has forks and not loops. Otherwise you may have a uncle-daddy, a cousin-momma or maybe some extra digits or something.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
So....can I nail my cousin?
Wow - what an opinion. As a follower of Christ, and a student of the Hebrew scriptures, it's my understanding that he fulfilled almost 500 prophecies from them.
I'll take this opportunity to quote from what I consider to be a reliable source:
The list goes on and on and on. This is not "after the fact" stuff. Your assertion that he fulfilled none of them is not consistent with Christian belief. Perhaps it's consistent with Jewish thought, but this would be where the unity of "Judeo-Christian thought" breaks down.
My hope for relationship with God is the fulfillment of prophecy when Christ, who lived a perfect and holy life, was wrongfully put to death and then rose from the dead. The apostle Paul (a converted Jew) said
(emphasis added)
FWIW - the first major controversy in the Christian church was about Jews. The major question was whether Christ's salvation was available to anyone who wasn't a Jew!
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Dude, your niece is HOT!
I Can't help noticing that the timing they suggest for having *all* shared ancestors roughly coincides with the "age of the world" claimed by religious fundamentalists. Wouldn't be interesting if this bit of genetic pseudo-science becomes an argument used by creationists?
Weren't all the races pretty much established by that point? How can an Asian be the common ancestor to Africans, Australian Aborigines, etc?
Read "The Ancestor's Tale" by Dawkins. He goes over this at the start of the book, leading back to the first 'concestor' (convergent ancestor). He goes over the whole idea of some one individual being the ancestor of all humans pretty quickly, but he covers the problem of isolated gene pools (Australia & Tasmania), and I'm sure he's got some good references to other works which cover it more in depth.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
We do have some other sources to consider.
The Bible reports a Worldwide flood in 2370 B.C.E. which seems preserved in some form in
every national grouping as a flood legend of some sort. Over 150 such have been identified.
That fits with the 2000 - 5000 year analysis.
Genesis 11 reports on the tower of Babel, and how the language problem there caused
widespread migration. Moving East from Babel or Babylon gets one by land into India/Asia.
Moving South gets one into the Arabian Peninsula, or Ethopia/African Continent (13 mile boat trip).
Moving West gets the migrant to Egypt - North Africa (No Suez Canal - remember?)
Moving North you can reach Turkey/Greece/Europe, or in to the Republics that were the USSR.
What also supports this in the article is that everyone previous to this period is either a
direct relation (i.e. ancestors of Noah) of their families died out (Flood Victims).
I figured someone could find a better number - I just surfed around IMDB for a few minutes. I followed John Rhys-Davies first because I knew he'd been in a *ton* of movies. He's even busier than Kevin Bacon. That "Oracle of Bacon" is pretty funny though. Isn't that cheating? :-)
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
It seems that if you have any group of people that has been isolated for a few thousand years (islanders... those white japanese?... remote native tribes... certain religious groups.. people with a strong tendency to inbreed only in their group?) that they could have a separate bloodline going further back than Chiang estimates.
If you could get them to donate some genetic material, you could check that possibility.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Think about it! Think about all the recent progress our species has made recently. It has been alleged that
man's intelligence has not grown 'suddenly' within the past thousand or so years. Man even invented a steam
engine and moveable type in Greco-Roman times. Others have speculated that is man is really as old as some
say he is, 4 million years, why then did he not 'civilize' before recent times. If he did, should there not
be some ruins of this. The oldest ruins that we know of for civilization are buried under hundreds of feet
of water off the coast of India and alleged to be Vedic. At thirteen thousand or so years old, these are far older than the Christains' estimate of the age of man from 'Bibical creation'. Others using DNA analyses allege an age of recent man at less than 60 thousand years. This claiming that we are all descended from an ancient band of Kenyan survivors of an interglacial period. This also means all other competition became genealogical dead ends. These Kanyans are therefore the ancestors of us all, all so called races, so called nationalities, etc. However this does not explain why we were so smart so recently. Archeological records show a slow progress for tens of thousands of years with only the most rudimentary of accomplishments from millenia to millenia. All of a sudden about 14 thousand years ago there is progress. The oldest documented civilizations, the Chinese and the Vedic, come complete with written languages and some surviving books. Some of these books claim astounding progress, even to the point of using forms of energy conversion that we are just now researching, including sonofusion used to power ancient craft capable of air travel and maybe more. The 'Vimanas' described in the Vedas supposedly used
mercury based sonofusion to power them. If so, and there is a convincing logic that is even now being researched by heavily classified programs by the present Indian Government, these craft might not have been limited to just the air over our planet. Indeed the drawings of them suggest the present day F-22 with delta wings and double tails. Such drawings have been found not only in the Vedas and in other contemporary archealogical finds, but also in drawings in ancient south America. Aircraft like designs can be useful in space as well or for craft that go and come from space to land in planetary gravity wells. Fusion power would imply huge coefficients of performance, liberating spacecraft from huge fuel carrying requirements and enabling more space for useful payload. Bottom line is that the case is almost inescapable that we as a species are bioengineered by visitors not of this world. Open your minds and think about it. Governments must know this as well, else why would they cover up evidence of this that shows up everywhere almost on a daily basis. Religious authorities must know how this threatens their case for very existance, for this is why they seek to deny the possibility of extraterrestrial life at virtually every opportunity. If all sightings are 'bunk', then why are the bases in southern Nevada so secret. When we were children we were told about 'Santa Clause' and his sliegh and gifts to all humanity in one night, Christmas night. Later, long after the improbability of it all had dawned of all but the slowest of us, our parents would admit one way or another that Santa was a fable. Then we did the same to our children. Denial of UFO's is like the affirmation of Santa that wa all had as kids. Only our parents did not come at us with guns and insanity commitment orders when we found out the truth.
Since we are bringing the bible into this, how does the bible explain the different races from the common ancestor without allowing for evolution?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Race is *not* primarily a social phenomenon, unless you are being impossibly thick about it, using races as rigid categories. Have you ever heard of population genetics? Sure, there are gradients and clines, but you can still clearly tell who is of which population for the most part. And as for such differences in populations not being biologically significant, perhaps you should read some Dawkins, selfish genes shared by a group will make them group centric and more ruthlessly competivive against those who are not a part of their shared ancestry, and more cooperative towards their kin, the same concept as family really. Kin selection may be a more familiar display of this phenomenon to some. To deny this is to be ignorant or dishonest of the very nature of life.
And now for a deconstruction of your rediculous assertions. First, the mere mention of skin color, and the predetermined sensitive reactions that it is sure to generate, shows that you have manipulative intentions, further evidenced by the tired "social phenomenon" bilge. But this is also a matter of being too rigid and not seeing the middle ground, the sharing of a trait with another population doesn't negate that they can be characterized as being of different ancestry, "on the whole". Deceptive manipulation of scale?
Next, please provide a proof for your exogamy assertions, especially the extreme characterization you give, not some tamer view.
And while I agree that racial purity is pretty unlikely, especially if you go back over 1000 years, this doesn't diminish in the slightest the implications of a less rigid form of common ancestry, and the selfish gene implications of such.
Overall, you strike me as dishonest and dogmatic wrt the PC ideology. Such a shame that self-serving agenda's can so successfully censor science, a true shame of our essential fallability and weakness.
Just to add for those curious, what logical motivation could somebody who understands the facts of life and genetics have for this deception? Well one example is somebody who is from a genetically(possibly not visibly) different population who wants a competitive edge in a society where they are a genetic minority. Beware folks, PC is exploitative competition by those who are more ruthlessly ethnocentric than you can imagine, helped by a cadre of inculcated useful idiots.
WOW.. putting Angel Boris into google image search is very very NSFW!!!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Yay, racially aware people are ignorant because all people are identical and equal.
Thanks for being a propaganda parrot. Very insightful!
http://www.noahsarksearch.com/faq.htm
"If you believe evolutionary dating mechanisms (old earth of 5 billion years old), which makes many unstated assumptions as fact both before and after the flood, then you would state that the flood was probably 20,000 to 50,000 years ago. This is why old earther's scoff at the search for the ark, as it is extremely unlikely any of the boat would have survived for tens of millennia. However, if the ark is actually scientifically documented to have survived, this would present a dilemma for old earther's, who typically rely on many generations being left out of the biblical genealogies.
If you question evolutionary dating mechanisms (young earth of 6,000-10,000 years old), then you would state that the flood was between about 5000BC to 2350BC, depending on how many generations were left out of the biblical genealogies. See the Link webpage for more information."
f lood.asp
This page is quote facinating when taken in context with the geneology data:
http://answersingenesis.org/creation/v4/i1/noahs_
When was Noah's Flood? 1,981 years to AD 0 plus 967 years to the founding of Solomon's Temple plus 480 years to the end of the Exodus plus 430 years to the promise to Abraham plus 75 years to Abraham's birth plus 350 years to Shem's 100th birthday plus 2 years to the Flood. The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years.
This date is, as expected, in conflict with secular archaeology which regards the Flood as either local or a myth and the Biblical chronologies as irrelevant or inaccurate.
The placing of a catastrophic global flood in the year 2304 BC means that all civilizations discovered by archaeology must fit into the last 4,285 years.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
Someone gave you a major line of BS, as far as the Jews are concerned.
:)
And there you have it. Of course Jews and Christians disagree about the interpretation of the scriptures. It's all about context, and translation can sometimes be tricky. You can find scholars who say that the Hebrew text meant one thing, and I can find scholars that say it means another. You have to look at the whole package. I have looked at several religious systems, and find Christianity the most compelling world view out there.
Your mileage may vary, that's what makes religion, politics and sex so volitile that in polite society people don't bring them up in public.
Of course, I'll also differ with your assertion that Paul is the only NT writer we know for sure by name. And he never met Jesus.
First, the documentary evidence of the gospels is sufficient to clearly identify the primary followers of Christ. Secondly, while Paul never contends that he met with the human person of Christ during the 30+ years he physically lived on this planet, Paul's conversion from a zealous Jew to a zealous Jewish Christian was motivated by his encounter with Christ.
I could go on, but time runs short. I'll close with this: the idea that the books contained in the Bible are the ONLY things you need to read to understand Scripture is an idea foreign not only to Judiasm, but even to Christianity itself, at least for the first 1500 years. Until the Sola Scripture heresy began, everyone understood that there were countless other subsidiary texts and traditions one had to know and understand.
I beg to differ. Christianity was built on the idea that the Hebrew scriptures were foundational to faith and while the first generation of Christians did not have the whole of the New Testament (because it had not yet been completed) as parts of the NT were available, people referred to that as authoritative.
The whole divide within Christendom about the sufficiency of scripture alone came as a result of the abuses perpetrated by people who decided that they wanted to extend the reach of the church beyond what Christ intended. Interesting that you'd portray that as a heresy. Should I assume that you're a Roman Catholic?
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Trust me, I know racism all too well. My GF is Chinese, and I'm from the US (I'm white BTW). Her parents object her being with me because I'm "western" and not Chinese. Based on what I've read and who I've talked to about this, it's perfectly normal. This happens all the time when any Chinese women is with some guy outside of China. The parents *will* object and often with bitterness.
I've also been told the Japanese are just as racist too. Wouldn't suprise me as both the Chinese and Japanese have an imperial history.
Life is not for the lazy.
Now, if we superimpose on that some other genetic traits - less stable characteristics that aren't useful for long-term study but are excellent for figuring out the ordering of very closely-related groups - then you would be able to complete the tree. Well, almost. You would know for certain how everybody alive today (or dead but DNA-testable) related to each other, exactly, with the exception of ancient DNA that does not belong to any surviving group, even remotely. If everyone were to carry out the best existing test tody, and published the results on a DNA search engine, you'd have a map of phenominal detail that could show how every living person related to every other living person. The knowledge and technical capability exists today.
Sure, as I said, to get the absolute map, you'd need to have people take a test that included more than just the regular markers but looked for additional information. Maybe recessive genes, or something, where the presence/absence alone would tell you nothing but when combined with the other information may provide you with the ability to order the groups with identical markers.
So, yes, I see nothing to stop a world family tree from being done today. Getting people to take part in something that in-depth and that invasive might be hard - people are naturally suspicious of any new technology and how it can be misused. For that reason, I think it would be better if museums started the ball rolling - do a COMPLETE map of the DNA of every human skeleton they have in their posession. Better yet, of every hominid. The mechanisms will apply just as well to neanderthals and others. And by complete, I mean complete. Every known genetic marker, every known recessive gene, every identifiable trait, for y-DNA and mt-DNA as far as it still exists. The whole lot. (Many Egyptian mummies are not strictly in museums, but they're still reachable and so still technically testable.) Then, as far as can be done, do the same with any deceased historic figure whose identity and time-frame can be firmly established. (Any remains with a provable timeframe would be useful to build up the tree, but the more you can put names and faces to the DNA, the better.)
I'll repeat - this has to be the maximum resolution analysis you can possibly do on what survives today. 10-point samples won't cut it, unless that's all the data you have, in which case it's not much use in constructing the tree anyway.
THEN make that same test available as cheaply as possible. Not everyone can afford the few thousand dollars the multiple tests at such high resolution would cost, at today's prices. The perceived benefit has to outweigh both the cost AND the perceived risks combined. Because the perceived risks are very high, the cost needs to be extremely small. The Genography Project has a lot of samples, but to do a World Family Tree, you need thousands of times as many participants just to get an outline, with tests that are vastly more extensive and sensitive, with vastly better coverage of the planet. You can't limit it to richer countries. You need about 2-3 billion samples, fairly evenly distributed across the planet, to build a high-quality tree. Ideally, you'd sample all 7 billion people alive today.
Could something on this scale be done? Sure. Even something as gigantic as that is within the capacity of modern technology. If you were to gather all the currently unemployed lab technicians around the world, guarantee them a job for about four or five years, and provide
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
According to the population geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and his associates, 84.4% of our DNA diversity is accounted for by differences between individuals. 10.8% are 'racial' differences between continental populations, and the remaining 4.7% are 'ethnic' differences between populations on the same continent. Through gene flow by interbreeding and short-range migration, neighboring populations are always more similar to one another than geographically distant ones (Barbujani et al., 1997).
b erg.pdf
http://www.mankindquarterly.org/winter2003_meisen
Bravo, sir, if I had mod points I'd mod this post up and your last four ones as well. I may yet. Its comments like these that remind me of why I come back to slashdot. More of you, please.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Yes, it's similar in that you're referring to the particular races of people in the country.
But both you and the other poster are putting too fine a point on it. You're dividing things down much more than they need to be. Like dividing English into Saxons and Normans.
My point (and it goes along with the original poster's) is that subdivisions at that level are immaterial. The large division between Iraqis and Iranians is that Iraqis are Arabs and Iranians are not. It doesn't matter if the Iranians are Aryans, Aztecs or Normans, any is equally foreign to the Iraqis and other Arabs in the Middle East.
I don't mean to step on toes, because we're all on the same page here. I'll quit while I'm not too far behind yet.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
As I said: if you think the Japanese or the Chinese cultures have problems still with white people, check out what they both have to say about Koreans. Most of Asia has a long way to go, if not longer, than the far better integrated and multicultural West.
With all due respect, the only way that you and I could seriously hope to progress on this topic would be to invest the time to start from the beginning and carefully define each term we intend to use. It's clear to me that your position and mine differ in many substantive ways - in ways that are discernable at the onset, and most likely in ways that are not discernable until we get to the meaning of the words that we use.
Frankly I'm not sure that I understand what you're saying - in some cases you seem to be really clear and precise, and in others you're making sweeping generalizations. Perhaps those generalizations are well founded on much evidence, but I'm not certain of that and can't be without far more time having been invested.
At this point, I think it's probably best to bow out of this discussion because it doesn't seem suitable for this forum (relatively short life span of threads, long posts are discouraged by the page layout, etc) and it seems inefficient to do this here rather than face to face.
I fully support your right to hold whatever views you choose, and I make no claims about the supportability of the arguments you are making. I don't see things the way that you do, and my experience and considerable study on these topics has yielded results that differ greatly from what I believe that you have proposed.
Thanks much for your time.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
The 60,000-years-ago figure you give for the Genographic Adam (about the same figure is found for the Genographic Eve) indicates how long ago we all shared an ancestor strictly along our paternal lineage. If 60,000 years is 3000 generations, we would have some 2^30 shared ancestors, less overlap (same ancestor on multiple lines) which brings the number down, as the article points out, to more-or-less the number of people in the world at that time.
In other words, we all had the same male ancestor down our paternal line 60K years ago as tracked by the Y-chromosome, and the same female ancestor down our maternal line 60K years ago as tracked by mitochondrial DNA. Guess what? We also had millions of other ancestors in common 60K years ago which can't be tracked by either Y-chromo or MDNA. And probably we all have a common ancestor just 2-5K years ago who, not being directly down either the paternal or maternal line for most of us, also can't be tracked by either genetic analysis technique.
So, if we were to speculate on this World Family Tree, with the quality and quantity of data that would imply, then yes there are certainly a lot of major privacy factors to consider. Such data would need to be maintained by a strictly neutral, strictly benign group that would need to be 100% protected from ANY interest (political, law enforcement, whatever) for ANY and all reasons whatsoever, no matter what, no exceptions. A fully automated system (so no humans are involved) that used the best in encryption and tamper-proof technology to collect and collate the data would be good. Problem is, the data is then useless as nobody would be allowed to see it.
Now, if instead of building a current family tree, we ONLY store historic data to this level of accuracy, it would be useless for three-letter agencies that should know better, but extremely useFUL for scientists and genealogists.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hahaha! Modded up twice in the same discussion!
Sir, I am humbled and shamed by your artistry. Rest assured there are still those among us who appreciate a skillful troll.
20721 R.I.P.
Look, I could assert that red is not always red. You could say "yes it is, you moron."
If we took the time to talk about physics, red light, wavelengths and the expanding universe, it could become plain that red is sometimes red-shifted to another color. In order to really determine that we each understand the others' position, we'd need to lay the foundation.
Just because you assert that "the scriptures are far better understood by the Jews" doesn't mean that they really understood what they claimed (or claim) to know. In order for you and I to have a civil, intellectual and meaningful conversation, we have to lay a foundation on which we can agree and which does not use inflammatory language or ad hominem arguments. You make broad claims about what Christians believe. I as a Christian do not believe all of what you assert, but obviously it is pointless to have a reasonable conversation with you because apparently you already know everything.
I'm done here. Thanks for your time.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
No. It's not that I can't.
When I have attempted to defend my point of view, you have refuted with broad assertions that I am obviously wrong. That is not intellectually honest on your part. Intelligent and capable people more informed about Hebrew and translation than you or I have respectfully disagreed about these issues for a long time. For you to scornfully claim that it's obvious that Christian scholars are wrong is... rather uncharitable to say the least.
Either you cannot or will not consider opinions other than yours. Your tone and word choice are well described by your word - arrogance. Your attitude is speaking so loudly that I cannot hear your intellect at all. I sincerely doubt that you are interested in hearing mine.
Is it possible that your point of view is less than perfect? What evidence would be sufficient to demonstrate to you that Jesus is the Messiah? Is there any evidence that would be sufficient?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
There is no serious possibility of any ongoing gene transfer between Tasmania and mainland Australia or anywhere else between the flooding of the Bass Strait land bridge after the ice age and the first visits of European sailors. As much as I enjoy the waters of Bass Strait, they were simply not crossable by humans with the technology available in that region.
Further reflection on Olsen's above mentioned secondary claim suggest that his model might be unreasonably assuming symmetrical inheritance flow between low contact regions. In reality, visiting/stranded males will have been responsible for almost all of the flow at the lowest contact levels, so the direction of movement will be highly asymmetric. Therefore it remains most unlikely that the broader human population of 1400 AD had ancestors who had lived in South America or Australia since the ice age, even though the reverse is undoubtedly true. So the secondary claim might work for -20K but it remains fanciful for -7K.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
i did something similar online once, rounded up a bunch of neo-nazi's into citing the christian bible as rational for hating homosexuals, then made them realize they were following ancient hebrew scripture.... boy were they pissed
"pure bred" is just a fancy way of saying inbred racist hick
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
OK. You asked. Genesis chapter 1.
Everything was made "According to it's kind", i.e. there is a range of variation within the species
which allows for variety. So Alsatians and dashounds are both dogs (A 'kind'). Yet they can interbreed
(I've seen the pups!). Neither can interbreed with cats, however.
In the human species, African, Celtic and all other groups can interbreed. So Aborigines and Eskimos
can marry and have kids. But humans can't successfully interbreed with chimps.
If you want to go into creation/evolution, it's business DOT kid AT gmail DOT com and we'll take it there.
OK sure, but my point was if Noah and his offspring were the only survivors of the flood, how do we get multiple races today?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You're nearly up with me. I must have explained it poorly. /Sick of myself quoting Scripture at this stage :)
Noah was the common ancestor! His offspring spread out.
Any in the period before that were either forefathers of Noah, or
their family line died out. All this nicely supports a worldwide flood.
Genesis chapter 10 gives his immediate descendants. It finishes up saying
" 32 These are the clans of Noah's sons, according to their lines of descent,
within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth"
Interestingly, the old place names in Mesopotamia relate to these families.
So it's history, and geography in one lesson. Kinda convinces you that it happened.
Genesis 11 has the account of Babel, how languages were confused, and records:
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the
whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth."
I believe the three songs of Noah provided the branches for divergence. We also don't know much about each one's wife and what race(s) they were.
Yes I understand all that, but you still haven't addressed my primary question. My point is how did multiple races (black, white, brown, etc) spring from a single race without the effects of evolution?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Well, no. You're absolutely right the whole crusades/inquisition were politically motivated, but Christianity was not offered as a "sugar coating." It was more of a litmus test to insure fealty - "tell us the church is your god, and never speak against it, or die!" Quite fascist, on the whole. Then of course there is the Catholic aversion to anything biblical. Already far enough o/t, I'll stop there.
Have you been reading the comments? There's no point in me writing otherwise.
The variation in the gene pool allows variation (as in races) without the need of evolution.
The proof that they have not 'evolved' is the fact that all races interbreed, have similar intellects,
skeletons, similarly complex languages, skills, social mores, etc. This is not the case with, for
example, chimpanzees, who have 48 chromosomes whereas humans, as we know, have 46.
I am reading your comments, and you are completely avoiding the questions I raise.
Were not talking macro evolution as in new species, but micro evolutions and mutations that result in different hair, eye and skin color, as well as other slight changes such as muscular and skeletal variations. Macro evolution needs a few million years, not a few thousand as is the case we are talking about here.
My point is if we all came from one middle eastern man, Noah, there is no longer any variation in the gene pool. To get these variations, genetic mutation must have occurred-the basis of evolution. However the opponents of evolution, the creationists, say that God created the world as static without change. So again, I say that multiple races from one family line is impossible without evolution.
And there is nothing in the tower of Babel story that would suggest that God created multiple races from one. It's a bit of a stretch to assume that having your language changed affects your skin colour.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The children are given the father's name on the off chance he might stay around for the upbringing.
More importantly there are 2 genealogies, nuclear and mitochondrial, and they are not symmetrically keyed to the sexes. There may also be behavioral genotypes. Think of names as part of a larger tracking methodology for the various genealogies we express.